The explosion in Maegor's Holdfast sent shockwaves through King's Landing that were felt long after the last ember of green fire had guttered out. Stone that had stood since the days of Aegon the Conqueror crumbled into ash. When the dust finally settled, nothing remained of the royal apartments but a blackened husk and the lingering, sulfurous stench of wildfire.
The pyromancers who examined the site confirmed what all had already surmised: no body could have survived that conflagration. Princess Elia and her children were declared dead, their remains consumed so completely that not even bone fragments remained for the Silent Sisters to collect. The world mourned, or pretended to, and the Targaryen line was believed extinguished save for the infant Viserys and his pregnant mother Rhaella, who had fled to Dragonstone weeks before.
Sandor Clegane's revelation regarding the wildfire caches beneath the city altered the course of events in ways that none could have anticipated. When Eddard Stark and Clegane descended into the city's underbelly and emerged with maps in hand, the evidence was irrefutable: clay jars by the thousand, stacked in forgotten chambers that ran beneath the Street of Steel, the Great Sept of Baelor, and the Dragonpit itself. There was enough wildfire to turn King's Landing into a second Harrenhal, and the Mad King had intended to burn it all.
Faced with this, Jaime Lannister confessed. The young knight stood before Ned Stark and his assembled captains and spoke plainly of what he had done and why. He had killed Rossart to prevent the order from being given. He had killed Aerys because the king had been moments from commanding the destruction of the city. The words came haltingly at first, then with growing conviction, and by the time Jaime finished, the silence in the throne room was deafening.
Ned Stark, whatever his personal feelings regarding oathbreakers, was not a fool. He looked at the maps spread across the table, at the diagrams of the city's underbelly marked with red circles, and he understood that the man before him had saved hundreds of thousands of lives. The northern lord's jaw worked beneath his beard, and when he spoke, his voice was grim.
"The sack ends," Ned said. "Now."
Tywin Lannister, summoned from his command tent outside the city, arrived to find his carefully orchestrated plunder already being dismantled by northern and Vale soldiers. The Lord of Casterly Rock had expected resistance, had prepared arguments and threats, but when Ned Stark showed him the wildfire maps and explained what they represented, Tywin immediately understood the severity of the threat facing them. The sack was halted immediately. Lannister soldiers who in the hours before had been dragging chests of silver through the streets and massacring the population of King's Landing were now herding smallfolk toward the gates, evacuating the districts nearest the known caches with an urgency that bordered on panic.
Robert Baratheon and Jon Arryn arrived three days later, riding at the head of a column of Stormlanders and Valemen who had harried the remnants of the Targaryen host across the Crownlands. Robert, still wounded from the Trident, took one look at the maps and set aside all talk of coronation. The matter of the crown could wait. The matter of the city burning could not.
What followed was an operation of unprecedented scale and delicacy. Jon Arryn took command of the evacuation while Tywin Lannister organized the removal of the wildfire itself. The clay jars were extracted from their hiding places one by one, carried on padded litters by men who moved with the cautious reverence of pallbearers, and transported to barges that ferried them out to the Blackwater Bay where they could be safely destroyed. The work took weeks. Men died during the extraction — three pyromancers and a dozen soldiers who mishandled a cache beneath the Street of Flour — but the alternative was unthinkable.
Varys proved indispensable. The Master of Whisperers, who had maintained his network of little birds throughout the chaos, produced maps of the underground that surpassed even those found in Rossart's chambers. His knowledge of King's Landing's secret passages and forgotten tunnels guided the extraction teams through the labyrinth beneath the city, and though Jon Arryn distrusted the eunuch's motives, he could not deny his usefulness.
Ned Stark remained in the capital long enough to see the plan well underway. Then a raven arrived — its source unknown, its message brief and unsigned — bearing news of Lyanna Stark's location. The northern lord read the parchment, and within the hour he had gathered his most trusted men and ridden from King's Landing without explanation. Robert, still bedridden with his wounds, demanded to know where his friend was going. Ned offered no answer. He rode south, toward Dorne.
In his absence, the matter of Jaime Lannister came to a head.
The young knight's confession had transformed him in the eyes of many. Where before he had been an oathbreaker, a kingslayer, a man to be despised, he was now viewed with a complex mixture of gratitude and suspicion. He had saved the city. This was undeniable. But he had broken the most sacred vow a knight could take, and that too was undeniable. The realm was divided on the matter, and the division played out in the council chambers of the Red Keep, where the new order was being negotiated.
Tywin Lannister saw his opportunity and seized it. In a council meeting attended by Robert, Jon Arryn, and the primary lords of the rebel alliance, the Lord of Casterly Rock made his demand.
"My son acted to save this city from destruction," Tywin said coldly. "He killed a madman who would have burned hundreds of thousands alive. The Kingsguard vows are sworn to protect the king from his enemies; Aerys Targaryen was his own worst enemy, and my son ended the threat. He has more than earned release from his vows and the right to resume his position as heir to Casterly Rock."
The argument was sound. Robert, unconcerned about the matter, nodded his agreement. Jon Arryn, ever the pragmatist, saw the political wisdom in granting Tywin this concession. The other lords murmured their assent. The matter seemed settled.
Jaime Lannister stood from his seat at the back of the chamber. He had said little during the proceedings, his face a mask of careful neutrality, but now he stepped forward into the torchlight, and the room fell silent.
"I decline," Jaime said.
The words landed like a slap. Tywin's expression did not change, the Lord of Casterly Rock had spent a lifetime mastering his features, but those who knew him well saw the slight tightening around his eyes, the almost imperceptible stiffening of his jaw that signified fury beneath the mask.
"You what?" Robert asked, his bright blue eyes widening.
"I decline the release, Your Grace," Jaime repeated. His voice was steady, almost casual, but his green eyes held a new hardness. "I wish to remain in the Kingsguard."
Jon Arryn leaned forward. "Ser Jaime, you must understand what you're refusing. Your father has secured—"
"I understand perfectly, Lord Arryn." Jaime's gaze moved to his father, and for a moment something raw and unguarded passed between them — the son's defiance meeting the father's fury across the width of the council table. "I killed a king to save a city. If I leave the white cloak now, men will say I did it for land and gold. They will say my father arranged my release, and I was complicit. They will say the Kingslayer broke his vow for Casterly Rock." He shook his head. "I will not give them that satisfaction."
Tywin's voice was dangerously quiet. "You would throw away your birthright. Your inheritance. Casterly Rock itself."
"The Rock will survive without me." Jaime's smile was thin and without warmth. "I have a brother, Father."
The reference to Tyrion hung in the air like a blade. Tywin's face went utterly still. Every man in the room felt the temperature drop.
"Your brother," Tywin said, each word forced out through gritted teeth, "is a dwarf."
"He is a Lannister," Jaime replied. "And he is cleverer than both of us."
Robert, witnessing a family dispute he had no desire to mediate, cleared his throat heavily. "The matter can be revisited. There is no need to settle this today."
"The matter is decided," Jaime said. He turned to Robert and inclined his head with an easy grace. "Your Grace. I will serve as your Kingsguard, if you'll have me."
Tywin Lannister seethed. The council chamber emptied around him, lords and captains departing with the careful steps of men passing a sleeping dragon. He remained seated at the long table, his hands flat on the wood, his pale eyes fixed on the door through which his eldest son had departed. Jaime had chosen a white cloak over the West. Jaime had invoked the dwarf's name in open council. The humiliation burned through Tywin's chest with a heat that would have reduced a lesser man to rage, but Tywin was not a lesser man. He sat, and he breathed, and he re-assessed the options before him.
He would not bow. He would not plead. He would retreat, as a lion retreats from a hunt that has turned, to wait for more favorable terrain.
As he sat, his mind turned to another matter of great importance to his legacy.
The question of the royal marriage could not be advanced while Lyanna Stark still lived. Robert's heart belonged to the girl's memory, and no amount of Lannister gold could compete with a ghost. So Tywin waited. He returned to his command tent outside the city, and he wrote letters to Casterly Rock, and he watched.
x_________________x
A moon passed. The wildfire extraction continued, the evacuation wound down, and the city began the slow work of rebuilding what the sack had taken. Jon Arryn governed from the Tower of the Hand. Robert himself drank and brooded and spoke of Lyanna constantly in preparation for their marriage that he was convinced he would take place once Ned returned with Lyanna.
Then Ned Stark returned.
He rode through the Mud Gate at dawn, accompanied by a single man, Howland Reed of the Neck, small and quiet and green-eyed. In Ned's arms, wrapped in a heavy cloak of northern wool, lay an infant. The child was small, dark-haired, with a face that bore the unmistakable stamp of Stark blood in his grey eyes. Ned presented the boy to Robert in the throne room with grim formality.
"My bastard," Ned said. "Jon Snow."
The name hung in the air. Robert's eyes went wide for a moment, he looked at the child, then at Ned, and then he roared with laughter. The sound boomed off the stone walls, startling the guards. Robert slapped his knee, his wounded shoulder protesting the movement, and leaned back on the Iron Throne with tears gathering in his eyes.
"Ned Stark!" he bellowed. "Ned Stark the pure! And here I thought you'd never stray!"
Ned said nothing. He stood before the throne with the child in his arms, his grey eyes flat and unreadable, his jaw set beneath his dark beard. Robert's laughter eventually tapered off, withered by his friend's expression. He looked around the throne room, his gaze sweeping across the faces of Jon Arryn and the other lords who had gathered for the morning council, and then his eyes returned to Ned's face.
He reached out and touched the infant's cheek with one massive, calloused finger.
"You'll raise him at Winterfell?"
"I will."
Robert nodded. Then his expression darkened. He leaned forward on the throne, his massive hands gripping the arms of twisted steel, and he asked the question that had been burning in him since Ned's departure, "Ned. Where is she?"
Ned's face went still. The northern lord had ridden from Dorne without rest, his body gaunt from weeks in the saddle, his eyes red-rimmed and hollow. He looked at Robert, and at Jon Arryn, and at the assembled lords who had gathered to hear his report, and he spoke in a voice stripped of everything but the bare facts.
"Lyanna is dead. She died in the Tower of Joy, in the Red Mountains of Dorne. Fever, the maester said, though she had been wounded before." He paused. The silence in the throne room was absolute. "Three of the Kingsguard guarded her—Arthur Dayne, Gerold Hightower, Oswell Whent. They would not yield. They would not stand aside. We fought, and they are dead. I was delayed returning Dawn to House Dayne."
Robert's face went through several expressions in rapid succession — confusion, disbelief, denial, and finally a blankness that was worse than any of them. His hands, which had been gripping the throne with white-knuckled intensity, went slack. He sank back against the blades, and for a moment the Iron Throne seemed to swallow him, the ancient steel framing his broad shoulders like a cage.
Then he made a sound that was not a word. It rose from somewhere deep in his chest, a raw animal sound howl of grief that filled the throne room, containing everything he had fought for and everything that had been torn from him. He lurched to his feet, his wounded leg buckling beneath him, and caught himself on the arm of the Iron Throne. His face was contorted, his eyes wild, his beard wet with tears and spittle.
He seized his warhammer from where it leaned against the throne and began to smash.
The first blow took a Targaryen banner that hung from the gallery, tearing the three-headed dragon from its mount and sending it crumpling to the floor. The second shattered a display case containing a model of Old Valyria, glass and painted wood exploding across the stone. The third caved in the chest of a suit of armor worn by Aegon the Conqueror, the ancient steel buckling like parchment under the force of Robert's fury. He destroyed everything that bore the dragon sigil — tapestries, statues, shields mounted on the walls — reducing centuries of Targaryen heritage to splinters and scrap. His men watched in silence. No one moved to stop him.
When the destruction was complete, Robert stood amid the wreckage with his warhammer hanging at his side and his chest heaving. His wounds had reopened; blood soaked through the bandages at his shoulder and thigh, darkening his shirt. He looked at Ned, and his voice, when it came, was hoarse and broken.
"I loved her, Ned."
"I know."
"I want to see her," Robert begged. "I want to see where you buried her."
"She rests in the crypts of Winterfell," Ned replied softly. "Beside Brandon and Father. I would have brought her back, but the journey—" He stopped. The lie was already constructed, the details already in place. Howland Reed had helped him build it, the crannogman's quiet competence ensuring that every loose thread was tucked away. "The journey would have been too much. I made arrangements for her body to be transported back to Winterfell."
Robert slumped back against the throne and sobbed. What use was a throne to him, when the reason he fought had been taken from him.
x_____________x
Ned Stark left King's Landing within hours. Jon Arryn pleaded with him to stay — the realm needed the Warden of the North in the South, the new king needed his friend, the council needed his counsel. Robert himself, once the fury had passed and the grief had settled into something quieter, begged Ned to remain. The northern lord refused them all. He had a child to raise, a sister to bury, and a wife waiting in Winterfell who had given birth to his son. He rode north with Howland Reed at his side, Jon Snow in his arms, and the rest of the Northern forces at his back.
In his absence, the political calculus shifted.
Tywin Lannister, who had been watching from the wings made his move. He requested a private audience with Robert and Jon Arryn, and in the Hand's solar, he presented his proposal.
"Cersei," Tywin said. "My daughter. The most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms, and the wealthiest bride any man could hope to secure. A marriage between House Lannister and House Baratheon would unite the stormlands, the westerlands, and the crown in a bond that no lord would dare challenge. The realm needs stability, Your Grace. It needs gold to rebuild. It needs Casterly Rock behind the throne."
Robert refused. His eyes still red from weeping, his massive frame slumped in Jon Arryn's chair like a man who had been hollowed out.
"I won't marry for politics," Robert roared. "I won't marry at all. Lyanna—"
"Lyanna Stark is dead," Tywin said flatly. The words were delivered without cruelty and without warmth. "But, the realm still breathes."
Jon Arryn, who had been silent throughout the exchange, placed a hand on Robert's shoulder. The old lord's face was lined with the weight of months of war and governance, but his blue eyes were clear and steady.
"He's right, Robert. You are the king now. The king does not marry for love. The king marries for the realm."
"I didn't want to be king," Robert growled. "I wanted to kill Rhaegar and bring Lyanna home. That's all I ever wanted."
"What you wanted is no longer relevant," Jon Arryn said gently. "What the realm needs is stability. Gold. The Lannister alliance secures the west and fills the treasury. Without it, we face years of unrest, of lords testing the new king's strength, of rebellions sprouting like weeds. You won the war on the battlefield, Robert. Now win the peace with this marriage."
Robert looked at his foster father, and something in the younger man's face cracked. The defiance drained from him, replaced by a weary resignation. He stared at the maps on the table, the Seven Kingdoms laid out before him, bleeding and broken and waiting to be healed, and he nodded.
"Fine," he said. "I'll marry the Lannister girl."
Tywin's expression did not change. He inclined his head with the careful grace of a man accepting a victory he had always known was coming.
"Your Grace honors House Lannister," he said.
Meanwhile, from Dorne, there was naught but silence.
The kingdom that had lost a princess and her progeny, maintained a stillness that was, to those who understood the Dornish temperament, more ominous than any declaration of war. Doran Martell's ravens ceased. The Dornish lords who had attended court in previous years did not return. The ten thousand spears that Prince Lewyn had led to the Trident were withdrawn to the passes of the Red Mountains, and the border garrisons were strengthened.
Then, on the first day of the new moon, a raven arrived at the Red Keep bearing the seal of Sunspear. A gold spear piercing a red sun on an orange field.
The message was brief, written in Doran Martell's careful hand, and it was read aloud in the small council chamber by Grand Maester Pycelle.
..
To His Grace, King Robert of the House Baratheon, First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.
The Principality of Dorne offers its congratulations on your ascension to the Iron Throne. The reign of House Targaryen has ended, and the realm turns now to a new dynasty. May your rule bring peace and prosperity to all the Seven Kingdoms. House Martell recognizes the authority of the Iron Throne and pledges its continued loyalty to the crown.
Signed,
Prince Doran Nymeros Martell, Lord of Sunspear and Prince of Dorne.
..
Jon Arryn read the letter twice, his eyes moving across the parchment searching for the trap hidden in plain sight. He found none. The words were precisely what they appeared to be — a formal acknowledgment of the new king, couched in the language of diplomacy, offering neither challenge nor enthusiasm.
Robert, who had been drinking steadily since Ned's departure, set down his cup and stared at the letter with mild disbelief.
"That's it?" he asked. "No demands? No threats? His sister and her Targaryen spawn are dead and he sends congratulations?"
"Doran Martell is not a fool," Jon Arryn said. He folded the letter and set it on the table. "He knows that Dorne alone cannot stand against the combined strength of the other six kingdoms. He mourns in private and he rules in public. This is what ruling looks like, Robert."
Tywin Lannister, who had been present for the reading, said nothing. His eyes rested on the letter for a moment, then moved to the window, where the afternoon light fell across the city in long golden bars. His demands had been met, despite Jaime spurning his chance to return as heir, his blood would sit on the throne one day.
All was well.
The phrase was Jon Arryn's, spoken in the quiet of the Hand's solar that evening as he reviewed the wedding arrangements with the master of coin. The realm was stable, the crown was secured, the marriage would proceed. But they carried a weight that the old lord did not intend, a resonance that would echo through the years to come with increasing irony.
The wedding of Robert Baratheon and Cersei Lannister was set for the first day of the new year, in the Great Sept of Baelor, before the assembled lords of the Seven Kingdoms. The preparations consumed the capital for the remaining months of 283 AC. Lannister gold flowed into the city, repairing the damage of the sack, funding the coronation, financing the wedding feast that would be spoken of for a generation. Cersei herself arrived from Casterly Rock in a litter of gold and crimson, accompanied by a retinue of ladies and knights that stretched a quarter mile along the ocean road. She was eighteen, golden-haired and green-eyed, and when she stepped from the litter in the courtyard of the Red Keep, every man present understood why Tywin Lannister had called her the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms.
x_______________________x
284 AC
The wedding day dawned grey and cold, a morning that seemed to have been conjured from Robert's own mood rather than the gods' design. The Great Sept of Baelor stood draped in Baratheon black and gold and Lannister crimson, the seven-pointed star above the altar catching what little light the clouds permitted, and the assembled lords of the realm filled the pews in their finest silks and velvets, their breath misting in the unheated air. Jon Arryn stood at Robert's right hand, his old face grave and watchful. Tywin Lannister stood at the foot of the aisle, his expression the same mask of controlled satisfaction it had worn since the betrothal was announced.
Robert arrived first. He came on foot from the Red Keep, walking the length of Visenya's Hill with his warhammer slung across his back and a company of stormlanders at his heels. He had been drinking since before dawn. His face was flushed beneath his dark beard, his blue eyes bloodshot and distant.
His mind was not in the sept. It was in a tower in the Red Mountains, in a bedchamber he had never seen, with a woman whose face he could not quite remember clearly anymore, because grief had blurred the edges until the image was more feeling than form. Lyanna. He had fought a war for her. He had killed a prince for her. He had taken a kingdom in her name. And she was dead, and he was here, and the woman walking toward him down the aisle was not her and would never be her and the knowledge sat in his chest like a stone he could neither swallow nor spit out.
Cersei Lannister entered the sept on her father's arm, and the assembled lords drew a collective breath.
She was radiant. There was no other word for it, and those who witnessed the moment would use that description without hesitation for the rest of their lives. Her gown was cloth-of-gold over crimson silk, cut to emphasize the narrowness of her waist and the fullness of her figure, and it caught the candlelight and threw it back in waves that seemed to warm the cold stone of the sept. Her hair, the famous Lannister gold, fell in loose curls past her shoulders, crowned with a circlet of rubies and diamonds that caught fire in the dimness. Her emerald green eyes were bright with triumph, her lips curved in a smile that held the confidence of a girl who had been told since birth that she was destined for greatness and now stood at the threshold of its fulfillment.
She looked at Robert and saw a king. She saw the conqueror of the Trident, the man who had crushed Rhaegar Targaryen's chest with a single blow, the warrior whose name was already being sung in taverns from Dorne to the Wall. She saw the throne that would be hers, the crown that would rest upon her head, the children who would carry both their names into history. She saw everything she had been promised and everything she had been denied — the power that had been withheld from her because she was born a woman, now delivered into her hands through the simple mechanism of marriage. She was eighteen years old and the world was opening before her like a flower, and she walked down the aisle with her chin lifted and her smile unwavering, and she did not notice, or chose not to notice, that the man waiting for her at the altar was looking at something beyond her, beyond the sept, beyond the city itself.
The vows were exchanged. Robert spoke his lines with a flat cadence. His voice carrying none of the warmth or conviction that the words demanded. Cersei's voice, by contrast, was clear and bright. The High Septon bound their hands with a ribbon of gold and crimson, and the lords of the realm rose to their feet in applause that echoed through the vaulted ceiling.
Robert did not smile. He looked at his bride's face for the first time with something approaching attention, and what he saw there, the beauty, the confidence, the absolute certainty of her own worth, did not move him. It reminded him, in some obscure and painful way, of what Lyanna had not been. Lyanna had been wild where Cersei was composed, fierce where Cersei was controlled, and she had loved him, or he had believed she loved him, and this golden stranger standing beside him with her hand bound to his did not love him and would never love him. And even if she did love him, Robert would never love her back.
The feast lasted seven hours. The great hall of the Red Keep, repaired and restored with Lannister gold, groaned beneath the weight of roasted oxen and stuffed swans and casks of Arbor gold that flowed like water.
And Robert drank. He drank through the toasts and the speeches and the presentations of gifts, his cup never empty, his laughter growing louder and more hollow with each refill. He drank through the bedding ceremony, where the lords of the realm carried Cersei to the bridal chamber with bawdy songs and the ladies escorted Robert with equal ribaldry, and by the time the door closed behind them and the crowd dispersed to the sounds of laughter and crude jokes, the king was so thoroughly drunk that he could barely stand.
Cersei waited in the bridal chamber. The room had been prepared with Lannister extravagance — silken sheets, scented candles, a fire roaring in the hearth that threw golden light across walls hung with tapestries of stags and lions intertwined. She sat on the edge of the bed in a shift of white silk, her golden hair unbound, her green eyes bright with anticipation and hunger.
Robert entered. He swayed in the doorway, his massive frame filling the frame, his black doublet unlaced to the navel and stained with wine. The smell that preceded him was the sour stench of sweat and Dornish red. His face was flushed dark, his beard matted, his eyes glazed and unfocused. He looked at Cersei sitting on the bed, and for a moment something like recognition crossed his features — the understanding that a woman waited for him, that this was his wedding night, that certain expectations attended the occasion.
He crossed the room in three unsteady strides and fell onto the bed beside her. The frame groaned beneath his weight. He turned to her, and his breath was hot and sour against her face, and his hands found her body with the clumsy urgency.
Cersei's anticipation curdled. She had imagined this moment a thousand times — the great warrior king, the man who had shattered the Targaryen dynasty, taking her with the passion and skill that his reputation promised. She had imagined herself the center of his desire, the woman who would replace the northern girl in his heart, the queen who would be loved as well as obeyed. What she received was something else entirely.
Robert's hands were rough, his movements graceless, his body heavy and unresponsive beneath the wine. He fumbled with the ties of her shift, tore the silk in his impatience, and when he entered her it was with a single thrust that drew a gasp from her lips — not of pleasure but of shock, the physical shock of a body unprepared for the force being applied to it. She bit down on the inside of her cheek and stared at the canopy above the bed, and Robert moved above her with the mechanical rhythm of a man completing a task, his breath coming in ragged grunts, his eyes closed, his face turned toward the ceiling.
And then he spoke.
The word was barely a whisper, breathed into the space between them with the intimacy of a confession, and it landed on Cersei's consciousness like a blade.
"Lyanna."
She went rigid beneath him. Her hands, which had been gripping the sheets, went still. Her breath caught in her throat, and for a moment the only sound in the chamber was the crackling of the fire and Robert's labored breathing and the soft, terrible repetition of a name that did not belong to her.
"Lyanna."
He said it again, and again, each repetition quieter than the last, the name becoming a mantra, a prayer, a wound that would not close. His movements grew more urgent, his grip on her hips tightening until his fingers left bruises that would darken by morning, and still he said the name — Lyanna, Lyanna, Lyanna — until the word and the act became inseparable, two expressions of the same grief, the same longing, the same emptiness that no amount of wine or flesh could fill.
Cersei lay beneath him and said nothing. Her green eyes were open, her illusions shattered, and within her breast, venom curdled and she knew without a shadow of doubt, that she would hate Robert Baratheon more than she had ever hated anyone.
x_____________X
The wedding celebrations lasted seven days. The tables in the throne room groaned beneath the weight of roasted boar and venison, of lamprey pie and honeyed chicken, of bread still warm from the ovens and cheese from the Reach and wine from the finest vineyard in the Seven Kingdoms. Bards sang of Robert's victories, of the Trident and the Ruby Ford, of the warhammer that had shattered the dragon's breastplate and scattered rubies across the river like drops of blood. Robert drank himself into stupor each evening and was carried to his chambers by his squires.
On the morning of the seventh day, Robert was crowned.
The ceremony took place in the throne room, before the assembled lords and ladies of the realm. Jon Arryn placed the crown upon Robert's head — a circlet of gold and onyx, simple compared to the ornate crowns of the Targaryens, forged in the shape of antlers that rose from the king's brow like the horns of the stag he bore on his banner. Robert knelt and rose as king, and the lords bent the knee one by one, and the realm had a new ruler.
The Targaryen Dynasty was dead, and the Baratheon Dynasty had begun.
Tywin Lannister watched his daughter become queen and allowed himself a rare moment of satisfaction. The lion stood beside the stag; Casterly Rock stood behind the throne. Never had House Lannister stood so high. The humiliation of Jaime's refusal, the sting of Tyrion's existence, the long game sparked when Aerys Targaryen insulted Joanna to his face, all of it was worth this. House Lannister had won, and Lannister blood would run through the veins of every ruler of the Iron Throne from now until oblivion.
Meanwhile, in the depths of Casterly Rock, far from the celebrations in King's Landing, Tyrion Lannister sat in his chambers and worked.
The mithril vein from the Mines of Moria ran through the stone of his workshop like a silver river. The metal flowed under his touch, lighter than leather, harder than steel. He forged a dagger first — a slender blade that caught the candlelight and held it, its edge so keen it could split a hair lengthwise. Then a gorget, shaped to fit his small frame. Then a chain of links, each one etched with runes that glowed with a faint blue light when he channeled his will through them.
He worked through the night, the sound of his hammer a steady rhythm beneath the rock, and above him the great castle slept, unaware of the power growing in its depths.
The realm slept too, or pretended to. The war was over. The king was crowned. The queen was beautiful. The Hand was wise. The treasury was full. The future stretched before them like a road through summer countryside, smooth and sunlit and free of obstacles.
And all seemed well.
x_______________________________________________x
Five Year Time skip up ahead!!
Apologies if you guys feel as though this part lacks meat, but given that it is nearly pure canon I thought that giving a summary of the events post the sack of Kings Landing would be more appropriate than spending a few more chapters on this.
The Rebellion Arc is officially closed! We'll get back to Tyrion and his adventures now.
I have posted a picture of Tyrion on my for you guys to view for free if you're interested. (linktr. ee/DarkeBones.)
If you want to read TWO chapters ahead of my public release please see:
linktr. ee/DarkeBones.